The present exemplary embodiments pertain to a computer system which may need attention from time to time and, more particularly, pertain to handling a system blocking call while a user of the computer system is not present at the computer system.
When a computer system undergoes a time consuming operation, the computer system may, and often does, ask for some user input. When the computer system asks for the input, the computer system may display a notification to the user on the display of the computer system. If a user is not present when such a notification is displayed, the whole operation of the computer may be blocked from performing further operations. The operation of the computer system may be blocked unless the user provides the input or does an action as suggested by the computer system.
Some operations may take many minutes or even several hours and the user never knows when the computer system will display an input request. Accordingly, the user is essentially tied to the computer until the time-consuming operation is completed.
Some common time-consuming operations may include, but not be limited to, copying a large folder from one computer system to another computer system, installing or updating software or deleting a large folder. Each of these operations may notify the user to close some open application or restart the computer. If the user is not present to provide the requested input, the computer system may simply wait until the user returns.
For long running operations, it may not be possible for the user to monitor the computer system all of the time. The user may start the operation and move to another location to start another assignment while the computer system is undergoing the operation. But if the operation asks for user input before the user returns, then the whole process will get stuck at that point, resulting in a waste of man power and resource.